X.

MELTED SNOW

All day she sat at the window, watching it. In the dusk, when no other eye could
mark it, she saw it winding in the dimness. All night in her dreams it lay
before her, in its white aching emptiness.

How slowly the chill weeks crawled over her—two, four, six, eight. Still she
watched it till the colour faded from her cheeks and the bright restless light
grew strong in her eyes. Her old grandmother would lay her work aside and,
standing behind her, would stroke her hair softly with her old withered hands
and say, “You are not well my child; you are lonely; the place is too quiet for
you; a young life like yours should not be buried away here.”

And Undine would answer nothing, and sit watching, only she knew for what.

The snow had vanished and the road lay, a white chalky line between the brown
fields; only now and then a farmer's cart or a labourer from the next village
would pass along it.

page: 156

“Why do you never sit by the fire? It is so cold and cheerless at the window, and
there is nothing to be seen,” the old woman would say. But still she sat there,
looking out and stitching away always at delicate white muslins with pink bows
and dreamy blue and white stuffs, which the old woman thought made her look like
an angel when she tried them on.

“The child has changed,” she would say to herself, as she sat knitting and dozing
in the firelight. “She never reads now and thinks only of dress and music; but I
suppose it is natural; the young will be young.”

The winter went early that year, and the first signs of spring were showing
themselves. Undine did not count the days any more; she did not reason or ask
herself any questions; she only waited, waited.

One day she saw a boy coming down the road. It was quite midday and the sun was
shining with an almost summer-like warmth. She sat there with her hands folded
in her lap, looking at him yet not seeing him till he came up to the open window
and put a letter in her hand.

She started up and passed out through the next room, where her grandmother sat
knitting in the sunshine of the opened door.

“What is it? What has happened?” asked the old woman; but Undine only hurried
past her with the letter pressed tight in both hands against her breast.

Through the long leafless garden she passed,
page: 157
where the soft buds were just beginning to swell under the brown bark, through
the rough uneven meadow beyond, and sat down at the side of the little cozy
river that crept slowly between its muddy reedy banks. She sat long looking at
the paper in her hands, with its great red seal; then she tore it open.

What that letter said she never could remember; but she knew, when she had read
it, that the dream of her life had vanished, to return no more.

She put the letter whole into her mouth and chewed it fine between her grinding
teeth; then she sat still and watched a tiny white feather that lay upon the
muddy water bobbing up and down, up and down. Her mind seemed a perfect vacancy
but for the thought of that little white feather. She wondered if it would be
caught by nodding leaves of the reeds that dipped into the water, or whether it
would be stranded on the oozy bank—looked at the little white feather and
wondered, and ground the letter fine, fine, between her teeth.

Then, a sudden wild impulse seized her. She must rise—she must run—she must
flee—she must go—somewhere, anywhere.

With nothing on her head, sinking ankle deep in the soft mud, she broke through
the reeds and bushes and climbed up the steep bank with hands and feet. She did
not pause an instant, but ran on to the rugged hill with its winding sheep
tracks and sharp
page: 158 stones, climbed it, and ran
on among the trees and rocks that lay scattered on its summit. She did not seem
able to get further; again and yet again she thought she found herself in the
same place; and every time she looked up at the great red sun it seemed a great,
laughing, cruel human eye, looking down at her from the clear blue sky.

It was on her, on her, wherever she went, that great blood-red eye, and the great
brown hill opposite with its white chalk road was like a leering human face that
laughed at her, jeered at her, mocked at her; and the stones, and the trees—they
had all a hidden sneer about them. “Fool! fool! fool!” they cried. And the blue
cloudless sky overhead was so hard and pitiless, like a righteous human soul
which has no mercy for the erring. “O sky, blue cloudless sky, have pity, have
pity on me!” she cried in her madness; and she threw herself down and lay on a
great flat stone in the footpath. Gazing up into the sky's blue depths, she
looked straight at the dazzling sun with an unnatural strength of sight.

They drove her madder, madder, the sky, the sun, the earth; till she writhed in
her pain, like a trodden worm, on the ground and stones. Then the old feeling
came over her again, and she rose up and ran. Her sight seemed to grow dim and
blurred at last, and she stumbled and fell again and yet again over the stones
and stumps. Bruised, bleeding, she felt nothing, only knew she must run on,
on.

page: 159

Her grandmother looked out anxiously for her all day, and when it was growing
dark that evening, saw her walking slowly up the little garden path, with her
head drooping on her breast and her arms hanging heavily at either side.

“Where have you been, my child?” she said, coming out to meet her. “Are you not
bitterly cold?”

“No,” said Undine, wearily; and when they entered the little parlour with its
cheerful lamp and firelight her grandmother noticed that the bright anxious
light she was accustomed to see in her eyes had vanished.

“You look ill, my child,” she said, resting her nervous old hand softly on her
arm.

“I am not ill,” Undine said, “only tired. No, I am not hungry; I only want to
rest. I am tired, very tired. I want no light, thank you. Good-night.”